h the look of Assurance. He was
going away because it was promised and arranged for and he must go.
But he was coming again--he was coming again.

A golden moon rose through the clear east. He was in no hurry to reach
Glenfernie House. The aching, panting bliss that he felt, the energy
compressed, held back, straining at the leash, wanted night and
isolation. So it could better dream of day and the clasp of that other
that with him would make one. Now he walked and now stood, his eyes
upon the mounting orb or the greater stars that it could not dim, and
now he stretched himself in the summer heath. At last, not far from
midnight, he came to that face of Glenfernie Hill below the old wall,
to the home stream and the bit of thick wood where once, in boyhood,
he had lain with covered face under the trees and little by little had
put from his mind "The Cranes of Ibycus." The moonlight was all broken
here. Shafts of black and white lay inextricably crossed and mingled.
Alexander passed through the little wood and climbed, with the secure
step of old habit, the steep, rough path to the pine without the wall,
there stooped and came through the broken wall to the moon-silvered
court, and so to the door left open for him.

CHAPTER XIV

The laird of Glenfernie was away to Edinburgh on Black Alan, Tam
Dickson with him on Whitefoot. Ian Rullock riding Fatima, behind him a
Black Hill groom on an iron-gray, came over the moor to the head of
the glen. Ian checked the mare. Behind him rolled the moor, with the
hollow where lay, water in a deep jade cup, the Kelpie's Pool. Before
him struck down the green feathered cleft, opening out at last into
the vale. He could see the water there, and a silver gleam that was
White Farm. He sat for a minute, pondering whether he should ride back
the way he had come or, giving Fatima to Peter Lindsay, walk through
the glen. He looked at his watch, looked, too, at a heap of clouds
along the western horizon. The gleam in the vale at last decided him.
He left the saddle.

"Take Fatima around to White Farm, Lindsay. I'll walk through the
glen." His thought was, "I might as well see what like is Alexander's
inamorata!" It was true that he had seen her quite long ago, but time
had overlaid the image, or perhaps he had never paid especial note.

Peter Lindsay stooped to catch the reins that the other tossed him.
"There's weather in thae clouds, sir!"

"Not before night, I think. They're movin